In the cannabis industry, the name means everything

Complete with cheeky nods to childhood nostalgia, it’s no secret that cannabis strain names tend to teeter on a sly boundary of familiarity.

The playful nature of cannabis strain names is at the apex of cannabis policy. As the cannabis industry is an ever-changing giant, the bill’s language that legalized recreational cannabis, Prop 207, continues to be left up to interpretation. And because recreational marijuana is entering its third year, the roll out of policies has been unpredictable and subject to change.

I’ve seen this firsthand at the dispensary that employs me. A couple months ago, we faced a confusing new dilemma: Strains such as Candyland, Runtz and Gushers were now noncompliant in the eyes of the state. Anything with a connection to a brand that would be familiar to a child was now off limits within the recreational market.

This is because Prop 207 prohibits the manufacturing of marijuana products that “resemble the form of a human, animal, insect, fruit, toy or cartoon. The names of marijuana products cannot resemble or imitate food and drink of brands marketed to children.”

This language had always been codified in the bill, but the change was sparked simply by a lapse in time. Within the two years marijuana has been recreationally legalized in Arizona, the state has struggled to decide how it wants to enforce Prop 207.

For a while, the focus seemed to fall on the designs of packaging and presentations of a specific edible — no cartoons, no imitations of popular candies and a requirement of opaque packaging with clear THC warning labels. For the most part, the names of cannabis strains seem to slide under the rug.

Three years later, the recreational cannabis industry has found its groove within Arizona, allowing the subtext of Prop 207 to come to fruition. As a plethora of strain names were classified as being too appealing to children, cannabis brands had to be quick on their feet, mainly by omitting letters from the name of strains or abbreviating them altogether. Abbreviating names or removing certain vowels altogether was seen as an adequate fix. Runtz is now also known as RNTZ and Candyland is labeled as Cndyland.

From a legal standpoint, the counterculture that exists within the industry has resulted in a mangled few years of lawsuits.

In 2021, Wrigley, the makers of Skittles, sued the cannabis brand known as Zkittlez for copyright infringement, serving the brand with a cease-and-desist order. Any strain associated with Zkittlez may now be simply seen as the letter Z. For example, watermelon Zkittlez is commonly labeled as ZKZ. Similarly, the growers of the strain Girl Scout Cookies avoided legal trouble by abbreviating the name of the strain to GSC.

When paired alongside a market that thrives on medicated candies, brightly colored packaging and whimsical names, it oftentimes seems the industry is in constant opposition with itself. A once-lowkey community has now transitioned into something much larger; a moment in cannabis that signals the way in which an underground market must pivot when it reaches the public eye.

This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2023.